Saturday, September 6, 2014

Altina
Schinasi (1907-1999) was lucky enough to be born with the proverbial silver
spoon in her mouth. The youngest of three girls, her parents were Sephardic
Jews of humble origin who immigrated to the U.S.
from Turkey
in the late 19th Century.

Thanks to the tobacco
fortune soon amassed by their industrious father, the sisters were raised in
the lap of luxury on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Although headstrong Altina wanted
for nothing, she proved to be something of a rebel, opting to study art in Paris after graduating
from a prestigious prep school, rather than follow the conventional path of a
pampered debutante.

That was just the
first of many unorthodox choices on the part of the free-spirited trendsetter en
route to making her mark on the world not only as an artist and inventor, but
as a feminist and civil rights advocate who would march with Dr. Martin Luther
King. She was also a bit of a Bohemian in terms of her private affairs, being admittedly
driven by insatiable urges stronger than the societal taboo against adultery.

Tawdry scandals aside,
Altina accepted four proposals of marriage over the course of her life, the
last from the Cuban artist Tino Miranda, a handsome hunk less than half her
age. Though then well into her golden years, she had her Latin lover marveling
at her “stamina of a 25 year-old.”

Besides a healthy
libido, Altina was perhaps best known for designing the harlequin eyeglass
frame, a cultural contribution for which she won the 1939 American Design
Award. Still, the talented Renaissance woman‘s accolades for her innovations
and sculptures brought her less satisfaction than doting on her two sons,
Dennis and Terry.

All of the above is
recounted in entertaining fashion in Altina, a reverential biopic directed by
Peter Sanders (The Disappeared). The fascinating documentary’s only flaw is
that it leaves you wanting to learn more about its intriguing subject.

A frustrating tease
of a tribute that seems to merely scratch the surface of an overprotected child
of privilege-turned-irrepressible bon vivant.

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The Sly Fox Film Reviews publishes the content of film critic Kam Williams. Voted Most Outstanding Journalist of the Decade by the Disilgold Soul Literary Review in 2008, Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for 100+ publications around the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee and Rotten Tomatoes.

In addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.